


A World Without A Window

by SlytherinPirate



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: But mostly All Bad, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Well a tiny bit of comfort at the end I suppose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-05 04:01:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21207053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlytherinPirate/pseuds/SlytherinPirate
Summary: He was captured. His parents were gone, and he was captured. Where were they taking him? What would this new life, this new world, have in store for him? Nothing good, he figured.





	A World Without A Window

**Author's Note:**

> PLEASE READ: I wrote this story about Dirk being in Blackwing, using my experiences that I had being forced into a psychiatric ward as a child. If this is triggering for you, please do not read. Take care of yourselves. <3

His parents. How could his parents have let this happen to him?  _ They didn’t have a choice,  _ he reminded himself.  _ They died trying to stop this from happening. _

_ They’re dead. _

He fidgeted a bit where he was strapped to the chair, his arms straining against his straightjacket. He wished this truck had windows. He hoped that wherever he was going, he would have a window.

He could feel the attendant-- or, whoever the man sitting next to him was-- staring at him, but he couldn’t bring himself to return his gaze. Instead he stared at the truck wall in front of him, crying silent tears.

How could this be happening?

How could the Universe let this happen?

He wanted to go home, he wanted to go back to his parents, go back to school, back to his life. But he couldn’t go home. He could only go forward.

He wasn’t allowed out of the chair, or the straightjacket, when they reached their destination. They wheeled him out of the truck and pushed him into the building. He was dead silent the whole time; his eyes had dried sometime during the ride there, and they were now simply gazing around, curiously.

The facility looked like a hospital, if the hospital was a post-apocalyptic bunker. The walls and floor were a dark, cement grey. There were doors along each side of the hallway, and he vaguely wondered where they led to.

They rolled him around a corner and up a lift, and then down yet another hallway before they finally stopped at a room at the corner of the hall.

“Can I get out of this thing, now?” he asked, but his voice did not come out nearly as snarky as he had intended it to be. It sounded far away, quiet, although it was definitely his own voice.

The attendant said nothing, but, to his immense relief, he went behind him and started undoing the straightjacket.

Two minutes later saw him out of that blasted chair, stretching his arms. They had been cramped up a bit underneath the straightjacket.

The door of the room in front of them opened to reveal a woman wearing a labcoat.

“Project Icarus?” she asked. But she wasn’t talking to him. Instead, he followed her gaze to the attendant, who nodded. He didn’t know what ‘Project Icarus’ meant. The woman in the labcoat looked at him then, and her smile couldn’t conceal the cold intent in her eyes. He repressed a shudder. “You can come in here so we can get you sorted.” She opened the door wider so he could walk past her and into the room.

“Sit down,” she said, gesturing to a chair. He sat. “We’re gonna draw some blood for testing, okay?” She wasn’t really asking for permission, of course.

He didn’t know why she said ‘we’ when she was the only one talking to him. When she brought the needle out, he merely glanced at it. He wondered if it would hurt, since he already felt numb.

The halls were dead silent as the attendant led him down another corridor after he had gotten his blood drawn. The attendant opened a door on the left hand side and held it open for him. He followed him inside and placed a neatly folded jumpsuit on a nearby bench. The room looked like a strangely sterile gym locker room, with blue-tiled open showers adorning the right wall.

He looked from the jumpsuit to the attendant, unsure of what exactly he wanted him to do. 

“Well?” the attendant said. His voice was gruff and unforgiving. When he gestured to the showers, it became clear what he wanted.

“Do…” He chewed his bottom lip, feeling self-conscious. “Do you think you could maybe turn around?” The attendant let out an irritated sigh through his nose, but did, thankfully, turn around to face the opposite wall.

He looked between the attendant and the shower, still chewing his bottom lip, before beginning to strip.

He showered quickly, facing the wall. Though the attendant was also facing the other way, he still felt bashful. When he was finished, he toweled off and put on the underclothes that had been laid out for him with the jumpsuit, before picking up the jumpsuit itself to examine it. It was dark grey, not unlike the walls of the facility, and there was an orange stripe across the chest. There was also a strange symbol.

“Hurry up.” The voice from the attendant caused him to jump, and he hurriedly put on the jumpsuit.

The attendant led him out of the shower room and directly across the hall, where he unlocked the door, opening it wide and gesturing for him to enter.

He entered the room and turned around to finally ask some questions--  _ What is this place? When would he be getting out? _ \-- when the door was closed in his face, plunging him into total darkness. He heard the door click and knew that it had been locked.

His room did not have windows.

“AWAKE. AWAKE. YOU ARE AWAKE.”

He sat bolt upright in bed as all the lights came on, accompanying the loud voice over the speaker in his room. Did they really need the alarm noises, though?

“PREPARE FOR TESTING PROJECT ICARUS. DAY ONE.”

“Where did you take my clothes?” was the first thing he asked when the door to his room was opened and someone came inside. 

“You have clothes,” said the old man who had come inside. He was wearing a military dress uniform and was sporting a mustache. “Have you looked in the closet?”

He looked around at the closet in the corner of the room and got off of the bed to walk over to it. He was curious, did Blackwing get his clothes from his house and put them in his closet? The answer, much to his disappointment, was no, which he discovered as he opened the closet door.

“There’s… just two more jumpsuits.”

“That’s all you’ll need.”

“What did you do with the clothes I came in?” He turned to face the old man, who entered further into the room.

“You won’t need them anymore,” said the old man, clasping his hands in front of him. “Project Icarus, my name is Colonel Scott Riggins, and I’ve brought you here for a noble purpose.” He regarded the old man warily. “You are special, Icarus. Your abilities need to be researched, and that’s what we’re going to do.” His abilities… The abilities that allowed him to find all the lost cats in the neighborhood? Or the abilities that made him continuously get into trouble with his parents for wandering off and getting into dangerous situations? “And I promise you,” Riggins continued. “Together, we will find your purpose, the path that the Universe has laid out for you.”

His heart felt lighter at this. This man, Riggins, seemed… nice. Riggins was promising him something, and it seemed like Riggins was fully intent on delivering. 

He followed Riggins to his office and sat down in the chair opposite Riggins’ desk.

“We’re going to do our first test today,” Riggins said, before pulling out a few laminated sheets of paper. “Just to see where your mind’s at.” Riggins placed the first sheet of paper in front of him. “Tell me what you see.”

On the piece of paper was, what looked to him like a bunch of black ink splashed onto the page. It looked like…

“A bug.”

“Interesting,” said Riggins before pulling out the next paper. He neglected to tell him exactly what was interesting. “And this one?”

He examined the image closely. This one had two large black splotches, mirroring each other, with splashes of red sprinkled in.

“Looks like… two peple holding hands?”

“Mhm. And this one?”

The splotches were more jagged in this one.

“There are two women there,” he said. “They’ve both just been shot in the head, and there’s a butterfly in the middle.” He pointed to the butterfly-shaped red splotch. 

“Very unique answers,” Riggins said as he retracted the papers. “This just proves to me how special you are.”

He didn’t see how looking at an image of two women getting shot in the head proved that he was special.

“I’m going to have Private Gothel take you back to your room now.”

And, to his dismay, the attendant entered the room.

“Go on,” Riggins said, encouragingly. But Riggins’ smile was cold.

He got up and reluctantly followed the attendant-- Private Gothel-- from the room.

“Could I maybe get some paper, and a pen to write with?” he asked Private Gothel as they reached his room. “It’s just that writing really helps me cope, you know--” Private Gothel cut him off by shutting the door on him again, plunging him into total darkness once more.

Maybe he should have asked Riggins.

“Don’t-- Let go! You don’t have to grab--” He was protesting as the attendant manhandled him down the hallway. He could walk perfectly fine on his own, so he didn’t know why Private Gothel felt the need to treat him like a shopping cart.

A door on the right swung open and he was shoved inside. He stumbled backwards as the door was shut again, looking affronted.

“Hello?”

The voice was light and airy, almost melodic. He spun round and came face to face with a girl about his age. She was wearing a light grey jumpsuit with a blue stripe, and a different strange symbol inscribed on it.

“Hello,” he replied, cautiously. Was this girl another subject, like him?

“Are you here to play with me?” the girl asked. His expression softened. She was just lonely, and wanted a friend. He nodded, and the girl’s expression brightened considerably. “Yay!” She clapped her hands together once before taking his hand in hers and leading him to the table in the center of the room. “I was coloring in my book,” she said. On the table was a colorful booklet with the words,  _ ‘MONA’S COPEY SKILLS,’  _ written on the front.

He smiled. So they were letting him have friends in this place. He watched the girl-- Mona-- color in her book with a look of fondness on his face. He wanted to protect this girl, who seemed so sweet and innocent. Maybe… maybe they could find some way to escape.

“Oh! New friend!”

“What is it?” he asked.

“I want to be an actress, and I can play anything!” she said, excitedly. “Name something you really want!”

“I want…” He thought for a moment. “I want a window, so I can see outside.”

“Okay!”

Suddenly, in the chair that Mona was sitting in, appeared a small window. It was showing a beautiful summer day in a field, the sun blazing hot down upon the grass.

He gazed at the window in wonder. Even though his world had ended, even though he was trapped in this cage, there was still beauty to be found outside the walls of Blackwing. He was being held captive in this new world he had found himself in, but he still held a tiny sliver of hope.

After all, his world had a window now.


End file.
